Volunteers use donated wood to craft gifts for kids

Laura Bauer, Tribune News Service

As Jay Morris describes how he and a bunch of helpers use chunks of donated wood to create children’s toys each Christmas, one of those volunteers interrupts. “Jay, we got a wobbly,” neighbour Steve Wood hollers out from across the small woodshop in Morris’ basement in Lawrence, Kansas. Just like a head elf would do at the North Pole, Morris stops mid-sentence, apologises for the “red alert,” and heads to the wooden toy delivery truck that needs a little attention. After a bit of tweaking and dabbing glue on a wheel, Morris deems another worthy, sturdy and ready. And that’s a good thing. In just a few days, Morris will begin delivering the 115 trucks he and his crew have made this season to four area Toys for Tots drives, including the one that serves the Kansas City area.

These delivery trucks, with tambour doors — made of wood slats strung together with bungee cord that allows them to roll up or down as the door is opened and closed — go to families that have signed up to receive toys from the annual holiday Marine charity event for their children to open at Christmas. This year, Toys for Tots is filling a record 60,000 requests in the Kansas City area alone and every donation counts. Before the collecting even began last month, workers at the Overland Park Convention Center — the region’s largest donation hub for the Marine toy drive — knew they’d be seeing the wooden trucks. They just didn’t know what design the creator had come up with this time. “It’s so cool that somebody is putting in this much effort to give kids a nice Christmas,” says Britaney Wehrmeister, of the Overland Park Convention Center, who marvels at the trucks each year. Yet she didn’t even know who made them until she tracked Morris down a week ago.

“We all look forward to them every year,” she says. “Everyone gets excited to see them. The guys are like, ‘These are the coolest gifts.’” This year’s delivery trucks, made of scraps of oak and maple and poplar, seem strong enough for toddlers to sit on, large enough to haul a platoon of Army toy soldiers and just complex enough to keep a child’s attention for more than a few minutes. Exactly what Morris hopes for each year he comes up with a new style of truck to create. “We’re trying the best we can to not make something that will land on the Island of Misfit Toys,” Morris says, smiling wide, referring to the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer cartoon. “No square wheels.” No wobbly trucks.

From Labette County to KC: Other nonprofits that receive his toys share the same excitement. In the early days, Morris knew he wanted to do something for “kids without Christmas,” he just didn’t know where to donate his creations. Then a nurse practitioner friend of his in Labette County, Kansas, had an idea. “(He) said, ‘Dude, you ought to do Toys for Tots,” Morris recalled. “And I went, ‘Ah, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.” Ben Cochran is that friend. He and his wife, Audra, have overseen the Labette County Toys for Tots campaign for the past five years. He remembers that conversation with Morris and the first time in 2017 he dropped off his trucks. “I was absolutely blown away by the quality and the craftmanship,” Cochran says. “You just don’t find toys like that anymore, you know what I mean?” In Labette County, where 200 to 250 families — and their 600 to 700 children — are helped by Toys for Tots each year, they operate the drive a bit differently. Organizers set up the toys and games like a store and parents can come in and shop for their kids, picking out what they would like. Cochran says the JHM Woodworks toys “do really well” each year and are always taken. Parents are “amazed,” he says, with the craftmanship and “how great they look, but they’re still functional.”

“We have some parents that are here every year and that’s one of the things they look for, is Jay’s toys,” Cochran says. “They have several years worth of his toys, and they hold up really well.” After the success in Labette, Morris went to the Marine Toys for Tots in his own county (Douglas) and talked to the woman running it. He offered a few trucks to give away.

“She kind of looked at them, and said, ‘I don’t know if those will go over too well,’” Morris remembers her saying. “I said, ‘I got five of them. You can have them. If you don’t give them away, I’ll just come back and pick them up.’

“Before I even got home, she called me and said, ‘You got five more of those?’” Then he added Crawford County to his delivery list and finally the Kansas City area in 2021. Last year, 150 ‘54 Chevy trucks came out of Morris’ woodshop. Because he didn’t have as much wood this year, he couldn’t crank out as many delivery trucks. Though Morris doesn’t get to see the excitement on kids’ faces when they open one of his JHM Woodworks creations, he says he can imagine how happy the handmade toy makes them.

“If I can affect, if we can affect, over 100 kids every year, give them something that they never thought they would get, then that’s really a cool thing,” says Morris, clad in a brown T-shirt with a bunch of sawdust sprinkled all over it and the words Toy Builder on the front. “I assume every kid’s going to be loving these. I know I would because I still got a little Peter Pan left in me.” He smiles wide and adds, “Probably too much sometimes.”

The rules of toy building: The father of grown twin boys just retired late last year after four decades as a pharmaceutical salesman. He uses the leftover wood, called “cutoffs,” given to him each year by a “generous benefactor.” Morris got his first load of donated wood in 2014 and spent three years making large sets of building blocks. That’s a whole lot of sanding, Morris says. And it’s why he quickly bought into an idea he says Mary Ann, his “smart wife,” had years ago.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you make trucks?’ So, starting in 2017, that’s what he did with the donated wood. Each year a new design and more trucks. Morris has two rules for every toy truck he makes. First, he says, kids have to be able to put stuff in it. They have to be able to carry something around in the truck.

And rule No. 2? “Something has to move on it, other than a wheel,” Morris says. “Like a tailgate or a dump truck that articulates, a very simple thing like that.

“I always liked the toys you can do stuff with, not just push around.” Mary Ann Morris says she loves that over the years her husband “gets to be creative and kids who aren’t getting a present, get a present.” Her husband hopes that other “old geezers like me,” who are woodworkers can make similar toy trucks that follow the “prime directive.” You have to be able to put stuff in it and something other than the wheels has to move. “Challenge offered,” Morris says. “It can be one, five or more trucks built, then donated to Toys for Tots.”

A new design each year: The retired pharmaceutical salesman built dump trucks in 2017, and trains the next year. But those seven-car train sets may have had a pretty quick expiration date.

“We only did that one year because it was too many pieces for one kid,” Morris said. “We couldn’t affect as many kids.” The 18 wheelers in 2023 were fun.